Olive Video Editor review 2026: free open-source non-linear video editor with node-based compositing. Features, status, pros, cons, and alternatives.
Olive Video Editor is a free, open-source, cross-platform non-linear video editor for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Development began in late 2017 under primary maintainer MattKC, with the first public pre-release, version 0.1.0, shipping in May 2019. The project is released under the GNU General Public License version 3 and maintained by the volunteer Olive Team rather than a commercial company.
Olive was created to give creators a free alternative to high-end professional editing software, with a particular focus on node-based effects compositing that was largely missing from other open-source editors at the time.
Olive's defining feature is node-based compositing, which lets users build effects and transitions as a graph of connected nodes instead of a fixed linear effects stack, offering more flexibility and reducing reliance on third-party plugins.
The editor also includes a caching system that pre-renders part or all of a sequence to disk as small preview images, speeding up scrubbing and playback, along with standard non-linear editing tools built on FFmpeg for broad format support and OpenColorIO for color management.
Olive Video Editor is completely free and open source under the GPLv3 license. There are no paid tiers, subscriptions, or premium feature unlocks; the full application and source code are available at no cost from the project's GitHub repository and website.
Because Olive is community-maintained, users can also build from source or contribute code, translations, and bug reports rather than paying for support, though this also means there is no commercial support contract available.
Yes, Olive Video Editor is completely free and open source under the GNU General Public License version 3, with no paid tiers or subscriptions.
Olive runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS from a single open-source codebase.
Olive is currently labeled alpha software by its own developers and is described as highly unstable, so it is generally better suited to hobbyist and experimental projects than mission-critical professional work.
Olive's key differentiator is node-based compositing, which lets users build effects and transitions as a graph of connected nodes for more flexible, modular editing than a fixed effects stack.
Olive is developed by the volunteer-run Olive Team, a community of roughly 10-15 contributors, led originally by developer MattKC, who began the project in late 2017.
Popular alternatives include Shotcut, Kdenlive, OpenShot, Blender's Video Sequence Editor, and DaVinci Resolve.
Olive uses FFmpeg for decoding and encoding, giving it broad format and resolution support, though performance depends on the caching settings and available hardware.